Christian Childbirth Blog

Dear friends, I hope your year has been fruitful and a blessing up to this point.  I have been overwhelmed with school and had to stop all non-essential work for a few months.  But the semester is nearly  over for me, and I am getting back to my “real” life.

Isn’t it funny that we have a “real” life – one which we believe happens, or should happen, or that we want to happen; and we have the life we actually live that seems like it is only distracting us from our “real” lives.

So I take that back.  I have been living my “real” life.

My real life is interesting and amazing.  I am constantly learning new skills and information and my capacity to serve has grown exponentially.  But to experience this incredible time of growth I needed to participate in a “retreat” much more serious and Spiritual than any weekend getaway with my campus ministry in college. I have had to sacrifice things I enjoy, to choose carefully how I will spend my time.

So this makes me wonder, how many times has God given me an opportunity to grow and learn when I wasn’t willing to set myself aside to learn?  How many times has my inability to let go of the things I think I want or need gotten in the way of my growth?

I’ve made a goal this month to promote birth ministries.  I actually have a contest going on between the website and the facebook page to have individuals share about their birth ministry.  This brought up an interesting question, what is a birth ministry?

I have a group of friends that struggled through this question as we created the International Christian Childbirth Coalition.  We wanted to create a source of support for leaders of birth ministries, but not take over the job of any individual organization.  This meant we needed to define what a ministry was, who could join the ICCC and who should join an ICCC member organization.  It was a difficult process to work through.

But this contest isn’t about ministry leaders or membership.  It is simply about sharing what you do and how you do it.  The definition of a birth ministry can be much broader.  Here are some examples:

You may purchase books about pregnancy and childbirth for your church library to ensure families in the church have access to quality information.

You may organize food delivery for families with new babies or women on bed rest.

You may provide free childbirth education or doula services for the women in your church, or through a crisis pregnancy center, or friends of friends.

You may knit baby blankets to donate to a homeless shelter.

You may organize a birth or baby supply drive to send to churches in areas of need.

You may advocate for the rights of breastfeeding women at your church to stay in the service or to have private space to nurse.

You may plan weekly or monthly mother’s groups for new and expectant mothers so they can provide support for each other.

The point is, your personal birth ministry does not need to be anything formally organized.  It is simply the way you serve God by serving the needs of new and expectant parents.

I urge you to take a few minutes, write your story and share it with others to inspire them to find ways to serve God through pregnancy and birth.  Here are the directions: http://birthingnaturally.net/christian/ministry/contest.html

Did you notice I had been posting verses and commentaries on the facebook page?  It was just easier to manage with my crazy schedule right now.  I hope to slow down after January, but will still be enrolled in way to many credits so I don’t know when I can jump back here regularly – yet.

Just as a side note, I did a search for peace and grace on a Bible search engine.  Interesting fact is that in the new testament letters, grace and peace were often the greetings.  As an example, consider this:

Titus 1:4
To Titus, my true son in our common faith: Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.

I’m not really sure how to read this.  Should I read it as if it says “I offer you grace and peace” as if grace and peace are nouns – things? Or should I read it as if grace and peace are the verbs – an action being done by the writer.

As we continue to look at grace and peace, I encourage you to consider the difference between grace and peace as things you can have, and things you can do.

No sudden improvements in my ability to act with grace.  Learning is a slow process. So time to add another piece to the mix – peace that is.

1 Kings 18:37
Answer me, LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, LORD, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.

I just wanted to share this with you.  I don’t believe in Christianity that is about doing the right thing.  If all I need in life depends on me doing the right thing then I have no need for God.  Just give me the list of right and wrong and I can do it, at least as good as anyone else can.

I believe in a God who is more powerful than me. A God who doesn’t depend on me.  A God who doesn’t even need me.  I believe in a God who allows me to participate in what he is doing.  A God who changes me when I am ready, teaches me as I am able to learn and challenges me to help me grow.  I believe in a Christianity that exists beyond me.

My God is wild and crazy and unpredictable.  I don’t understand his ways and I don’t see the world through his eyes.  But I would like to. There is nothing inside me that can help me understand the world like God.  The only way for my heart to change, for my eyes to see the world differently, is for God to do it.

So when I say I will not fake grace because pretending will not change my heart, it is because I believe the ONLY thing that will change my heart is God.  Faking grace is about wanting other people to think I’m a better person–it’s just pride.

Colossians 4:6
Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

I know I have salt.  My conversations are definitely full of truth to the point of being stabbing. My conversation isn’t seasoned with salt, It’s drowned in rock salt.

If I made cookies with the wrong proportions, they would come out horribly.  My wrongly proportioned conversations are pretty horrible too. Somehow I need to get the mix better.  Keep some salt, but find a way to get the grace back in the mix.

But it cannot be fake.  I don’t do fake.  I don’t do pretending to fix things and I don’t do socially correct actions just because they are the “right” thing to do.  My actions do not change my heart because my actions come from my heart.  Faking grace doesn’t build grace because it is a selfish action.  It is about making me feel good about what I am doing rather than the real work of addressing the sin in my heart.

Instead, I spend the time with God to figure out what is getting in my way and allow God to change my heart.

Colossians 4:6
Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

I’ve already admitted to being without grace, so lets continue on with the next part of this verse.  Are my conversations seasoned with salt.  How are we going to define salt?

I think about the salt as the part that adds depth. Have you ever had cookies made without the salt?  They taste flat or bland. Salt adds richness of flavor, but does not adjust the texture.  Same with other foods – salt removes the bland and dull. Unsatisfying.

I had to stop for a minute.  Conversation full of grace unsatisfying?  Well, yeah.  I think I can see that.

Grace without salt, maybe that comes across as fake, as if you are not really listening or not really paying attention.  I think of the words of comfort people give without thinking.  For example, when a mother has a miscarriage and her friends say, “You can always have another one.”  The comment is meant to be loving and healing and comforting, but it is without real thought. Does the speaker really think a child is replaceable?  No, but they didn’t think about what they were saying.  They were just trying to sound comforting.  Grace without salt.

There is probably more than that.  It’s just the first example I could think of.

Colossians 4:6
Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

Yesterday I started with this verse, and said I tend to avoid conversations because people waste my time.  I promised to explain that fuller today.

As a student, I have only so much control over my time.  I have classes and assignments that must be done, and clinical hours I must complete. The work adds up, and quickly.  But unlike a traditional student, I have two children and a husband at home.  My family needs my time, so I must protect as much as possible for them. To do this, I try to bring home as little school work as possible. This isn’t always easy, some nights I get home after bed time and last semester I had to travel overnight for clinical time.  So I study between classes, finish assignments as quickly as I am able and generally try to stay focused at school.

That brings me to people.  Do I want to spend 20 minutes at lunch talking about things that do not matter?  Not if it means I will need to take 20 minutes away from my kids when I get home. So it isn’t that I dislike people, or even that I want to be ungraceful.  But in the back of my mind I am always calculating how much work I need to complete, how much time it will take and how I will protect as much time as possible for my children.

The result, I guarantee, is that my conversations are NOT filled will grace.

Colossians 4:6
Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

I am still learning about Grace.  About what it means for me personally, and what it means to me as a parent.   Today God brought me to this verse.

I’m wondering about this conversation “full of grace and seasoned with salt.”  It sounds like a recipe, but I’m sure it isn’t as easy as a pinch of this and a touch of that to live in my life. It makes me think about my conversations.  Are they full of Grace?  Probably not usually and definitely not lately.  It is as if I don’t give my chance to have grace because I avoid conversations when possible and when not possible I get out of them as quickly as I can. Honestly, sometimes it feels like people waste my time.

I’ll explain more tomorrow.